Gabriel-Ernest Study Guide

The son of a British colonial Inspector General, Hector Hugh Munro, better known by his pen name Saki (some of his writing was also published under the name H. H. Munro), was born in British-controlled Burma in 1870. Following in his father’s footsteps, Saki also joined the colonial police in Burma, but was forced to return to England permanently due to illness. After working as a foreign correspondent for the Morning Post in Eastern Europe, Saki found success as a writer of short stories, publishing several collections including Reginald in Russia, The Chronicles of Clovis, and Beasts and Super-Beasts, as well as multiple novels. Saki is believed to have been gay, having never married, but was forced to keep that part of himself hidden due to the criminalization and ostracization of homosexuality in Edwardian England. Saki enlisted to fight in World War I, and was killed in France in 1916.

The Edwardian era, which lasted from Queen Victoria’s death in 1901 to the beginning of World War I in 1914, was a time of great prosperity and technological advancement in British society. While the British Empire was at its height and few could imagine the coming destruction of the world wars and how it would affect Britain’s place in the world, writers of the Edwardian era began to take a more skeptical look at their society and its beliefs. Despite the general turn toward criticizing the ideals of the previous Victorian era, Edwardian literature was very stylistically diverse. Through exposing, mocking, or criticizing social structures of bias, discrimination, and oppression, writers like Saki encouraged their society to confront its darker side, as well as tackling the growing sense of anxiety many felt because of the rapid historical changes they were experiencing.

Saki was greatly influenced by leading late-Victorian and Edwardian writers before him, Oscar Wilde in particular. Wilde’s satires, such as The Importance of Being Earnest and A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, shine a similarly sarcastic light on the hypocritical power structures of Edwardian society. Likewise, Wilde’s gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Grey shares Saki’s concern for depicting social criticism through fantasy. Other related authors of the time include Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, who also used the short story form to explore both society and the supernatural. Saki himself was an inspiration for later British writers, including P.G. Wodehouse. His work is also comparable to other masters of the satirical short story from different contexts, such as the American writer Dorothy Parker.